Tripoli

Early in the morning (March 4) we hired a taxi to take us to Benghazi, some 500 km from Tubruk. The previous night after flying half way across the world we had driven almost 1,000 km.

Another group of journalists joined us and our cavalcade zipped through the cold north African desert, nothing but rocks and sand for miles. The road was smooth. All cars were headed in the opposite direction

Three-and-a-half hours is a long time. In eastern Libya at this time, it's an eternity. After five days of uneasy calm there was a palpable sense of threat on Day 6. The sort of feeling that gets your mouth dry even though you've just downed a pint of mineral blue. There was talk - always in hushed, urgent tones - at the ramshackle media centre near the Revolution Headquarters. Would Gaddafi